As Keir Starmer faces questions over a £5,000 donation towards his wife’s wardrobe, the Prime Minister is finding out that decency in public life isn’t an automatic function of not being a Tory, writes Alys Denby
When Victoria Starmer entered Downing Street for the first time wearing a Me+Em dress in Labour rose red, the media lost its mind. She was praised for her “leadership”, for “giving a masterclass in diplomatic dressing” and for displaying “London cool even in classic mode” (what?). Even the price of the outfit – £275 – was fawned over as the “sweet spot” of the fashion industry: “reassuringly aspirational, but not obscenely so”.
News that this and other dresses worn by the Prime Minister’s wife may have been paid for by a private donor makes this look all the more deranged. What at first looked like a PR win for the stylish Mrs Starmer now looks like petty corruption. But she is hardly the first spouse whose clothing has attracted controversy. Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murthy, made headlines for wearing a £570 pair of shoes on the school run. Never mind that, as a successful businesswoman, Murthy almost certainly paid for the shoes herself – if you’re a woman in the public eye you just can’t win. And given this level of scrutiny, is it really any wonder Lady Vic felt the need for a wardrobe glow-up?
The patriarchy makes hypocrites of us all, but that’s no excuse. Labour were supposed to be better than this. The British public were offered “change” from “out of touch” Conservatives with a fondness for helicopters, private jets, gold wallpaper and VIP lanes. Sanctimonious Starmer now appears to be falling short of the standards he set for others. His current embarrassment is a consequence of his own self-righteousness.
There is a tendency on the left to think that progressive beliefs justify actions they would otherwise condemn, as though decency were a natural function of not being a Tory. David Lammy offered a revealing insight into this warped world-view when he defended the Starmers’ benefactor as a “self-made man”. The foreign secretary seemed to suggest that Lord Alli’s money – not being forged in the Morian mines of capitalism – was somehow cleaner than anyone else’s. But there is no wealth independent of a profit motive and the morality of buying influence does not change depending on who’s in charge.
Politics is a grubby business
The reality is that politics is about trade-offs and therefore a grubby business – it is a mistake for opposition parties to pretend otherwise. Henry Newman has pointed out in these pages that a far bigger problem with our politics is that it is run on a shoestring. Instead of confecting outrage that a man who earns £160,000 a year can’t pay for his own family’s clothes, we should ask why he makes so little. A newly qualified graduate in Starmer’s previous profession, the law, can expect to earn around the same in their first year at a magic circle firm. Yes the Prime Minister may be in the top one per cent of earners, but he has the most important job in the country – he should be. Unless the public sector can properly compete for talent it will become the preserve of either the very rich or the perversely attracted to power. And as Newman says, the only alternative to using private money to properly fund our democracy is for all of us to pay more in tax.
Of course the Starmers have questions to answer and more could be done to enhance transparency and accountability around political donations. But we should also examine the expectations we place on people in public life and women in particular. Is it really fair to ask the Prime Minister to run the world’s sixth largest economy from above a Georgian townhouse, to represent the country on the world stage but only fly economy and for his wife to look mid-priced and perfect at all times?
Until we admit that we can’t afford a state that does all the things we demand of it, any government’s promises to be purer than the last will end up in rags.
Alys Denby is opinion and featured editor of City A.M.